THE LAST TANNER
GREECE , 2023, 15’
Director- Producer: Thodoris Sdroulias
The tanner’s leather processing craft is the last of the …Greek and traditional trades that are vanishing.
Greece is a country that, from the past until today, mostly relied on small scale manufacturing. Tanning and leather workshops in particular have played an important role in the country’s economy.
Gradually, like all traditional trades, they have, unfortunately, begun to disappear.
The processing of leather, a difficult but fascinating craft, from the moment it enters the workshop to the time it reaches production, is extremely interesting.
Today, even now, there are still few left, who preserve this traditional trade with a lot of effort. Under very adverse conditions.
TANNERY is the craft that treats animal skins in order to produce processed leather, through a series of processes that take about two months to bring the leather to its final form: salting, washing, drying, dyeing, finishing, and spreading are a series of processes that take place until leather reaches its final form.
Since ancient times the whole process was done traditionally and by hand using natural materials: water, salt, manure, sand, etc. After 1840, during the first industrial revolution, washing barrels, storage areas, new plant materials and so on gradually began to enter the process. It is a process that has not undergone any major changes
